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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25257217">bad habits</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves'>girlsarewolves</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>exchanges [34]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Skinwalkers (2006)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, Character(s) of Color, Darkfic, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Guns, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Nausea, Violent Thoughts, mentions of Sonja/Varek and Rachel/Caleb</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:15:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,040</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25257217</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s blood in her mouth. She wants to spit it out.</p><p>Everything fades to black, but she feels arms, slender and shaking, hooking under and around and dragging. All she knows in those moments before the black overtakes her is that it’s not Varek, it’s not Zo, it’s not right.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sonja/Rachel Talbot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>exchanges [34]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1269893</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Battleship 2020, Battleship 2020 - Red Team</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>bad habits</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheYearOfTheWolf/gifts">TheYearOfTheWolf</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <span>There’s blood in her mouth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Smoke fills her lungs when she opens her mouth, gulps down air like a drowning woman. Dancing firelight and flashes of lightning distort her new reality as her vision fades and weakens. The primal rage and predator grace are draining out of her, leaving her small and weak and bleeding in the floor.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Faces, smooth and furless and unwelcome, hover over her. Voices speak in hushed whispers her ears would have picked up easily moments ago, but all she hears is white noise.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s blood in her mouth. She wants to spit it out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Everything fades to black, but she feels arms, slender and shaking, hooking under and around and dragging. All she knows in those moments before the black overtakes her is that it’s not Varek, it’s not Zo, it’s not right.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>—</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Coppery aftertaste lingers on her tongue, metallic and sickening despite the sweetness. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>When she wakes she’s in the back of a car. Voices are whispering again, the indecipherable static maddening, but she’s too weak and in too much pain to snarl at them to speak plainly. Or better yet, rip out their tongues and watch them choke on their own blood.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She licks her lips and swallows down the lingering taste. Winces when her body shudders, almost revolts and wretches it back up. She fades out from the effort of fighting the nausea back down.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>—</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Rachel and Timothy. Their names are Rachel and Timothy, and they’re alive when they’re the ones who should be dead.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sonja wants to rip them open, wants to gorge herself on their flesh until she pukes and then feast again, will her body to take the raw, bloody mess of their insides until she bursts. Sonja wants to scream and bash their heads in. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Most of all, Sonja wants to know why.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Maybe a little more, Sonja wants to die.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Instead she’s silent, and skittish, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>scared</span>
  </em>
  <span>, because they’ve taken her, kept her, torn her open and ripped out everything that made her, </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and dragged the empty shell that’s left far from Varek, from whatever was left of him after they did the same only to find his shell was too far gone to survive.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Timothy asks her about him. Calls him </span>
  <em>
    <span>dad</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>Caleb</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Rachel looks at her with her fingers on the gun she always carries.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sometimes Sonja bites down on the inside of her cheek until she bleeds. Swallows it down on a stomach of empty, and savors the way it makes her feel sick from the hollow. Sometimes Sonja does it until she throws up. Sometimes she just spits the blood in Rachel’s face, and laughs when Rachel strikes.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sonja soaks in the pain. It’s better than the nothing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>—</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You reminded me of me,” she says one night.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re in the dark of another impersonal motel room, blue and red neon flickering in through the blinds. Tim is asleep in one bed. Sonja and Rachel are sitting on the edges of the other.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Rachel doesn’t know how to clean her guns very well. She holds the bullets and lets Sonja show her.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Neither of them see very well in the dark.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fuck you.” Sonja doesn’t want to hear this. Doesn’t want to hear his </span>
  <em>
    <span>wife</span>
  </em>
  <span> tell her she was just a lookalike, just the dark and wild and hungry one that he could turn and mold and use for a replacement.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know if he ever saw it. I only saw it then. You looked weak and confused and scared. Everything I had been feeling the past two and a half days, since the moment he rode into town with the four of you and started shooting away at the life we had.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She stops then, and Sonja is glad for it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They’re nothing alike. Never were. Never will be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I killed before he ever found me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Varek hadn’t even gotten to see it, her first. The blood on her face, her clothes, her hands. In her mouth, on her tongue. It had been hers, and hers alone. It was the one thing she’d claimed from who she’d been when she was nothing but a shadow of who she was meant to be.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Now she’s a shadow again. One that remembers what it’s like to be bone and sinew, one that remembers the light of the moon and the feel of ripping open life with fang and claw.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sonja hands the gun back to Rachel. She thinks about grabbing the bullets, thinks about shoving her away and loading the gun and filling her and her son up with lead. She pictures them on the motel bed, full of holes to poke and play with.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But it’s his wife. His son. And she lost everything he ever gave her. Even him.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Maybe that’s why he chose you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Doesn’t matter now.” She crawls up the length of the bed, curls up at the top around a stiff and lumpy pillow. She’ll be on the floor once Rachel moves to Tim’s bed. Sonja can’t sleep on mattresses anymore. Sonja can barely sleep with a roof over her head.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She bites the inside of her cheek. Bites with blunt teeth until they draw blood, and lets it pool in her mouth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>—</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There’s blood in her mouth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Smoke fills her lungs as she opens her mouth, sucks down the breath Rachel’s letting back out. Lamplight casts shadows in the dim room, but her reality is zeroed in on the woman she hates and the cigarette they’re sharing.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Rachel’s lips are glistening cherry.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s sickening,” she mutters, but Sonja leans in, licks the blood away, suckles to soothe the bite on the corner of Rachel’s lower lip. “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sonja pulls back. Takes the cigarette and breathes in until it burns. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Timothy is asleep in the other bed. He’s a heavy sleeper, nothing like his father.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Sonja smiles, shrugs. She doesn’t expect Rachel to understand. Doesn’t expect her to know why either of them are doing this, or why lonely shadows who are constantly numb will chase after the sweetness of pain or sick to fight away the hollow. She just licks away the coppery tang from her teeth. “Bad habits.”</span>
</p>
<hr/><p> </p>
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